Thursday, September 16, 2010

Dublin Dereliction Duty: Tivoli Car Park

Francis Street, Dublin

For someone who hasn't bought a record album since some Madness record in, oh, 1986, I do keep a soft spot in my heart for vinyl. Sometimes I still find myself calling them rekkid albums, in an affected voice that's supposed to conjure up a stogie-smoking producer from a bygone era: Hey kid, this rekkid is gonna make you a star.

Last entry's Caroline Records sign is about as beautifully bleak as it gets when it comes to memorializing outdated technology. (Really, you don't ever see artfully rotting signs for VHS, do you? -- but maybe I'm not looking hard enough.) What makes this "VINYL" an interesting companion piece to the Caroline Records sign is the "VINYL" sign isn't old at all. It's just been crafted by a canny street artist to look that way. And if you stick around this car park long enough, you might just find your nostalgia interrupted by a businessman hopping into his BMW. But that might, ya know, ruin the illusion.

More street art treats from the Tivoli car park can be gawked at here. It's truly one of my favorite hidden spots in Dublin.

What Is Ampersand Seven?

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The &7 Manifesto

"City life, urban life, living in big cities, in fact, is living in a galaxy of unimportant, random, stupid, absurd images. But your look gives a strange, mysterious meaning to these little details of streets, asphalt or cobblestone roads, advertisements, letters, all the little details of bus stops, or chimneys, windows. All these things constitute a texture of a city, and each city in that fashion is very different."